Bitcoin Forum

A lot of trading exchanges have been hacked and users funds stolen leading to the closure of such an exchange, following the recent hack of the binance and 7000 btc stolen by hackers and the effect of such on btc markets, i think the trading  exchange should consider an insurance policy to cover loss in case of funds theft.
Do you think this idea with work in the cryptocurrency business?

They already do have fund for backing these stuff up. Not only Binance, I believe most of the exchanges have a separate fund for facing unnecessary stuff like this. Business too follow the same strategy for avoiding unknown risk in the future.

There's a huge difference between keeping a separate fund and having an insurance.
A separate fund means the exchange will pay all(*) the missing money.
Insurance means the insurer pays for all(*) the missing money.
(*) It's actually not all the money, the upper limit is the size of the fund or the size of what the insurer covers.

However, this may be the best (or maybe the only available) solution. Let's read more:


First of all, there may be few (if any!) insurers that have the knowledge and the willingness to insure a cryptocurrency exchange. It's quite a complex business...
If the number of insurers is 0, clearly insurance cannot be done. If the number of insurers is small, the insurance may be expensive. If the insurance is expensive, an exchange that plans to stay on market for many years may find the fund @RapTarX mentioned be a cheaper option.

And there's something else: cryptocurrency exchanges may not like 3rd party audit (which and insurer may require) since exchanges probably do things that they shouldn't. One example is the new wash trading accusations against Binance.


So @RapTarX answer is not bad, just insufficiently explained.

That is not an insurance for me, lucky they have the funds to cover the lost funds, what if it's higher? or what if next time they will be hack again?
If that happens they will run out of SAFU funds, a good insurance should be catered by the third party and all funds has to be insured.

I think this is terrible, the perpetrators of crime will damage the scope of crypto ... this cannot be tolerated, all exchanges or businesses must immediately fix their security systems.

Yes there are some insurance based projects got success already. This kind of trading site may use such sites to insure them.

But the Insurance project should be wealthier than the trading else they cannot help them while they face the lose more over these insurance business people really worst to show their interest where is high risk.

Binance had i covered already. I don't know if that 7000BTC affected the market actually but BTC somehow rises instead. Exchanges offering insurance may not be entertained as security can be challenging at every turn. They can assure you security but the hackers are always on the look out for vulnerability. The insurance can just make the exchange go bankrupt in the end so just keep in mind that exchanges are not meant for storing of the coins.

It will give security and assurance to the exchanges if something the same happens in the future. But as pointed out by Neuroticfish, not every insurance company knows everything about cryptocurrency. They are likely to deny an exchange application due to the potential incidents that's connected to crypto. I guess they are all aware of hacks and it will give them a red flag if they'll try to continue that. Otherwise, you don't have to worry as mentioned, they have a separate fund for that.

Not really know about they have insurance or not, but like what people said. Centralized exchange means we not have control with our funds and that is why some people not really agree to trade in centralized exchange.

As far I know there is no insurance company will cover the hacks of exchanges because chances of insurance scams are high if this made possible by insiders so for crypto currency no insurance company will cover the lost funds,but binance already said they will return the lost amount which might come from their hands.

Insurance should be there is basic law to protects consumers funds and if there is no basic law regarding it i think it's very hard to the consumers get insurance especially for crypto exchange when some countries still debated the legality of cryptocurrency i think this will be hard to do so

This issue really goes beyond having a separate funds if I may intercept, the funds kept separately could have been used for better thing rather than using it to fill the vacuum left behind by theft.

I look forward to see an insurance company coming up to offer policy to cryptosystem, I feel this shall bring about more security and safety of funds.

The problem is that we probably need *many* insurance companies to come, not only one. If it's only one, if it's no competition, they will ask unreasonably high amounts of money (probably fiat) for the insurances.

I agree 100%. Banks have insurance policies and some exchanges have a lot of similarities so they should also offer insurance. Coinbase for instance state that if you are a United States resident, your Coinbase USD Wallet is covered by FDIC insurance, up to a maximum of $250,000 which shows that although Coinbase has a lot of pros and cons, it understands the need for insurance and more exchanges should follow by example and work on improving the policies they may already have in place.

It looks very wrong for me, how much reserved funds depend on the how much revenue that acquired by exchange itself. Only major exchange site big revenue can do that. have you seen cryptopia? it can become the best example how the medium or lower tier exchange site doesn't have any insurance or reserved funds to backed the trader's amount that already sent to the hot wallet on that exchange site.

This is already done in Japan since they introduced cryptocurrency license for exchanges. All exchanges must get insurance from an approved insurer, to insure deposits made by customers. Just like in a real bank in most countries. IF anything happens, insurance gets paid, and customers receive back the money. I understand that it has worked but it results in high premiums from the insurance, which is passed on as costs/fees to the customers.

If ever there will be this kind of insurance that will probably expensive because of the high risk thus whoever who will avail this isn't just an ordinary shitty exchange.

However, as far as I know, only the fiat base are insured in a certain exchange. And ao far, there are 4 crypto exchange sites are currently insured such as;

[1] Coinbase
[2] Circle
[3] Xapo
[4] Gemini

You can see the full article here.
https://flagshipcrypto.com/which-cryptocurrency-exchanges-are-insured/

Surely this thing has should be done bay some companies who able to do it, but in the current situation I'll bet there is no company who able to make it happen. There is many problem that will be faced by them, government's regulation, hacker factor and many thing that will make a company will think a thousand of time to do it. But, I'll believe if there is an exchange itself who become an insurer however this thing should be owned by all exchanges.

That's much better since they are also owning the funds what if there's another hacked that happened and the balance is not enough to cover the losses, it's better to have third party insurance company who will then caters the service, from that point of view the traders and investors might have an extra
confidence knowing that they are  still guarantee that the funds or part of the funds will be recover in anyhow.

Unfortunately there is no exchanges who does that. Its because they know they can not guarantee the safety of the funds even when they keep the promise of having unhackable platform.  They know its not possible. Look what happen to binance, almost everyone see this exchange to be the most credible, and must be protected well but look they still encounter hacking. Though the hack just took few and they instantly being dealt and they also took responsibility to the funds taken.

Um, just look at the two responses above yours and you can realize that there ARE some companies able to do it, and have already done it. The four exchanges in the response just above yours and then all the exchanges that have licenses in Japan. The government in Japan has issued licenses to those exchanges approved by all these regulators and one of the requirements is they must use the insurance as required by the government. So there you go. Please pay attention my friend!

Not impossible to do it but I guess it will be a transparent one and exchange will get the insurance money at a proper time.
For example, if an exchange acts like they have been hacked with a work of internal, how will you verify it?
Again, if a true hack happen, will they get insurance money or the insurance will wait for couple of years to prove that the hack was a real one?

This just proves out that there are people who dont make any research and even just simply try to read previous comments and just directly post up without even verifying if these things are already existing.


It would be indeed expensive yet insuer do knows the high risk of exchangers to be hacked and no shitty exchange would really have that kind of capacity on paying up that insurance amount.

The insurance company will do the job as they will cover the ensured amount.
Binance will only have to pay the insurance premium, but it's not as high as the amount of coverage.
Nothing to worry, insurance company will not allow that they will be scam, they also work to improve their business.


There is a processing time but I don't think Binance would wait until they get the fun from the insurer.
They will pay the users first and they will get the reimbursement once they get their insurance money.

Transaction is only between Binance and the insurance company, while our transaction is only between Binance.

what do you mean by verify ? check if the exchange is really got scammed or hacked ? but it does not matter at all if its an inside job or not but as long as they wont loose the money of thier costumers  .  im sure that all like the idea of trading insurance    .


the only safe wallet is hardware wallet and offline storage but if you are talking about online wallets then they arent secure because they are the still the same as trading exchange  , they can still be hacked  .

We cannot identify that an exchange is really hacked or not so no one is going to have insurance for this.Like you said trading sites are for trading so we have to move the funds to safe wallet when we are not going to trade which can save us from hacks.

Anything online are vulnerable for hacks however storing at your wallet is more safer than storing at trading sites yet don't be assured that the site is insured since it won't cover any losses if hack happened only on your account not unless it's proven that the security of the site has been breached.

Coins in our wallet does not need any insurance since it have not been transfered to where to exchange it to either btc, eth or fiat.
Our coin shall always be send to an exchange at one point or the other since it can not be exchanged in our personal wallet.
Users should have confidence in an exchange that their funds are safe at any point or the other.

For insurance issues in exchange, I feel a good idea, with the aim of avoiding things that are not desirable.
But to do this, I feel a little interested in people participating

Insurance for decentralised exchange will create the same centralized face for exchanges may be centralized exchanges may occur that policy to them but I see some insurance related projects are came to the market.
You may check with policy pal team to ask such services in future security and safety.

This sounds like an insurance for bank deposits for depositors. Here in the Philippines there is a company called PDIC or Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation. A bank needs to be a member of this so that the deposits of their depositors are covered but there's a limit. Lets say the coverage is up to $10,000 USD deposits. If anything happened to the bank, the deposits of the depositors are covered up to $10,000 USD, however anything above $10,000 USD will not be covered anymore. However, in Crypto exchanges, I think its going to be hard to prove that they did not hack themselves to get paid.

I think that would depend on every exchange itself because I think they have their own policy related to the stolen case. Maybe if we talk about binance, they can cover the lost fund because of the hackers because that is their mistake so the hacker can steal the customer's funds. But the other exchanges could not do the same as binance. But having insurance will give more protection for the members, so they don't have any worried if somehow the exchanges get hacked.

There can be no monopoly. There will certainly be competition. If we cannot have the options for insuring fund invested on the exchanges. I remember that there was Vernam with the idea of ​​insurance crypto property. unluckily. That's a big scam. What criteria will they take to compensate for the loss of investors from hackers or from people themselves? What will the ratio be? It is still an idea with many difficult questions.

Yeah this would be awesome should we get a platform like that but there's one huge obstacle to overcome for crypto to get there. That is to get pass regulators. Since insurance is monetary-involved and regulators don't permit such agencies to deal with crypto companies, it'd be difficult to get insured. Maybe with time and in future, we might get along and things shall be okay!

I don't  want to pay annually or monthly, I want the exchange to cover my lost funds just like what Binance did. And first of all, they shouldn't let any hacking incident happen on their exchange because even these things can possibly happen, traders are still expecting it to be prevented.
Let's take an example of bittrex, it is an old exchange but never been hacked.